Any ordinary act becomes extraordinary if you do it for long enough.
It's full moon today, and I took pictures of the full moon, like I always do.
Although if you have carefully following all other full moon photos that I took, you might notice that this one is in a slightly different orientation. Here we have the Sea of Tranquility on the right side and Tycho Crater is at the bottom left, compared to other photos where Sea of Tranquility is usually on top and Tycho Crater is near bottom right. This is because I took most other full moon photos at night while facing east, but this one I took at 4:43 in the morning, facing west. I had to take the picture in the morning because it was cloudy and raining last night. It was still cloudy this morning, but at least the moon was occasionally visible.
Why did I wake up at 4:30 in the morning to take pictures of the moon? I couldn't see the moon last night because it was all heavy clouds. So I check all the weather radars to see if the clouds would eventually clear, and looks like it's going to be heavy clouds all night. And then I went to check the forecast, and it was clouds and rain, all week. The best time to capture something close to a full moon was Monday, and Monday was already history. After 10+ years of taking pictures of the moon, the weather has finally failed me.
Last night's moon wasn't astronomically significant or anything, but having done this ritual for a decade, the act of taking picture of the full moon became special to me. I felt a sense of existential dread. I didn't sleep well. I woke up at 4:30 in the morning and look out the window, and there was the moon, behind a veil of clouds but there it was. I wasn't going to wait until tonight, I already tried my luck last night and it didn't work. So I went out and took pictures of the morning moon.
My totally ordinary monthly act of taking pictures of the full moon continues uninterrupted, at least for another month.
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